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Showing posts with label contact tracing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contact tracing. Show all posts

Thursday, October 14, 2021

The Data Are (STILL!) Clear: STOP Quarantining Healthy Kids!

Thankfully, more and more right-minded Americans are standing up against foolish and useless Wuhan Virus mask mandates across the U.S. Here’s another great example, this time from the Fulton County, GA—one of the largest and most liberal school districts in Georgia—school district:

As encouraging as it is to see this, too many Americans are still ignoring the foolish and unnecessary “contact tracing” and subsequent quarantining of healthy students across the U.S. Tragically, millions of U.S. students have missed significant in-person schooling because of the ignorant quarantining policies across numerous U.S. school districts. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 23 percent of U.S. parents reported that their children had been sent home from school as a result of Wuhan Virus quarantining policies.

There are approximately 56 million k-12 students in U.S. public and private schools. Thus, the number of students forced to quarantine is almost certainly well into the millions. In most of these cases, the students are not sick. They have merely been deemed to have been “in close contact” with “COVID-positive” person.

Additionally, the “COVID-positive” individual is often not sick. They have merely been the victim of a positive Wuhan Virus test result. This is especially the case with k-12 students. Even if otherwise healthy k-12 students are sick, often their symptoms are quite minor and they are back to normal within a few days.

As I, and many others like-minded, have frequently pointed out these past 18 months: when it comes to young, healthy individuals, the data have long made clear that the Wuhan Virus presents virtually zero danger. Recently, it was reported that Los Angeles County—home to the second largest school district in the U.S.—health officials announced that school districts now have the option to change their close-contact quarantine policies. This is because,

In total, nearly 2% of all staff and students countywide have been identified as a close contact of a case since the school year began. Data to date indicates that very few of the identified close contacts have subsequently tested positive, according to [public health Director Barbara] Ferrer.

As of last week, among the almost 30,000 people that ended up quarantined, 63 tested positive. [Emphasis mine.]

“This amounts to what we call a secondary attack rate of 0.2%,” Ferrer said, calling the figure “extraordinarily low.”

Of course, given that we’re talking about Los Angeles County, even this modified policy is filled ignorant, anti-science nonsense. (For example, students in “modified quarantine” need to “continue to always wear a mask indoors, outdoors and on the school bus, except for when they’re eating and drinking.”) However, it is telling that one of the most liberal places in the U.S. would publicly (and finally) admit what is really happening with kids and COVID, and subsequently change its Wuhan Virus quarantine policy.

All contact tracing and quarantining of healthy students in all U.S. schools should end immediately. The data demands it.

(See this post at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2021, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

The Folly of “You Are Only as Good as Your Last COVID Test”

Just prior to the Georgia (UGA) vs. Clemson showdown on the first full weekend of the college football season, you could just sense that media leftists were aching to (AGAIN!) make the Wuhan Virus an issue. The last thing the residents of Covidstan want to see is tens-of-thousands of rabid college football doing what football fans are supposed to do:

Three days prior to the game, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that UGA’s head athletic trainer—Ron Courson— “has been diagnosed with COVID-19.” Most other outlets reported that the trainer had “tested positive.” As the UGA coaching staff was hounded with questions about how this would impact the team, UGA head coach Kirby Smart stated that, “We are above 90% [vaccinations]. Ron and his staff have done a tremendous job making sure that guys feel comfortable getting the vaccination. We feel really comfortable with where we are.”

Coach Smart continued, “My goal is always to be 100 percent, because I think that it is the safest thing for our players .... but you are only as good as your last COVID test.” There are numerous issues with Coach Smart’s statements here, not the least of which is his position on the Wuhan Virus “vaccines,” but I think everything wrong in this story can be summed up with the foolishness that leads one to conclude “You are only as good as your last COVID test.”

The full blame for that statement does not lie with Kirby Smart. Most of the blame for such a foolish conclusion lies with school administrators and health officials who have put coaches—and the like—into the position where they can only properly do their jobs if Wuhan Virus test results are what such officials want them to be.

For over a year and a half now we’ve had to endure the rampant fear porn of those who simply refuse to acknowledge that viruses are simply going to virus, and that, in spite of this, young people the world over are in little to no danger from the Wuhan Virus. This is especially the case among the physical specimens that inhabit football programs at the collegiate and professional levels. This begs the question: Why are schools and athletic programs continuing to administer Wuhan Virus tests to healthy, asymptomatic students and athletes?!

Of course, this does not mean no one should be getting tested for the Wuhan Virus, but given what we now well know about the Wuhan Virus, for schools to rampantly test the young and healthy is folly rooted in foolish fear. As healthcare expert Kevin Roche put it in February of this year “Massive [COVID] Testing is Pointless and Worthless.” He added,

How much you test has nothing to do with how many deaths you end up with. One of the biggest myths is that if we only tested more we would have gotten this under control. Just nonsense that overwhelmed contact tracing efforts and resulted in lots of false and low positives.

As Mr. Roche alludes, once an individual has a “positive” test—which by no means indicates they are actually sick—the infamous and unnecessary “contact tracing” begins. I’ve heard from numerous parents whose healthy children have been sent home from school simply because they were deemed “in close contact” with someone who “tested positive” for the Wuhan Virus.

All of this ignorant and foolish nonsense is due to the false notion that young, healthy people are in danger from the Wuhan Virus. As Joy Pullmann at The Federalist recently put it,

Continuing to keep kids locked into masks and out of normal life is a mass hysteria based on conspiracy theories far worse than QAnon. It has no basis in science, data, or reality. It is entirely a psychotic power play that sane people must refuse to allow to control our lives, because it’s hurting kids and destroying our nation’s future.

Nevertheless, the hysteria and conspiracy theories persist. As I was running errands this past Saturday, just past noon (EST), I turned on the radio to listen to a broadcast of one of the first Saturday games (Wisconsin vs. Penn State) from college football’s week one. Just prior to kickoff, one of the radio announcers began discussing each teams’ “COVID issues.” He ignorantly declared that COVID was “still a major threat to these student athletes.” Of course, the Wuhan Virus never was a “major threat” to student athletes, and it is still not a “threat” any more than a cold or the flu is a “threat!”

Foolish testing, masking, contact tracing, and the like, is also based on the false notion that the asymptomatic are significant spreaders of the Wuhan Virus. They are not. This is certainly the case on a football field! (As the CDC and the NFL revealed to be the case near the beginning of 2021.)

“You are only as good as your last COVID test” has taken on even more significance for UGA football. During his Monday (9/6) press conference, two days after defeating Clemson, Kirby Smart told reporters,

I’ll be honest with you, I’m as concerned as I’ve ever been, because we have three or four guys out with COVID and we have a couple staff members that have been out with COVID here recently. For us, we’re at our highest spike. And people are talking about vaccinations, well these are people that are vaccinated.

There is no mention if anyone is actually sick. If foolish contact tracing is employed in this situation, UGA could be down multiple players for its game this coming Saturday. For a team with national championship aspirations, and players who will never get this time back, that is no small matter. When reporting on this matter, Bleacher Report declared,

While Smart explained the players experienced breakthrough cases, they are statistically safer because they were vaccinated. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that those who are vaccinated are 29 times less likely to be hospitalized or killed as a result of the virus (h/t Katia Hetter of CNN).

Of course there was no mention of how “statistically safer” are young, healthy athletes, or how many times “less likely” a college athlete is to be “hospitalized or killed” as a result of the Wuhan Virus.

If you don’t want to worry about the outcome of the “last COVID test” of an athlete or student, fed-up parents and like-minded and influential school and athletic officials—especially coaches and athletic directors of powerful programs—need to demand most all “COVID protocols” cease! We don’t need to be testing anyone who lacks Wuhan Virus symptoms, and we certainly don’t need to be sidelining or quarantining the young and healthy.

(See this piece at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2021, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com